


Carve Your Name

by Verbyna



Category: Sherlock (TV), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Harm to Children, Psychopathology & Sociopathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-23
Updated: 2014-05-23
Packaged: 2018-01-26 06:36:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1678370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Verbyna/pseuds/Verbyna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I wasn’t going to use it on you,” Jim tells Q mildly, holding his hand out. Q, eleven and too smart by half, gives his brother back the knife.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Carve Your Name

**Author's Note:**

> Apparently I can't write Sherlock BBC fic that doesn't include Q as someone's comparatively normal little brother? It's a most peculiar affliction.

"Then he thinks about the idea of a museum: [...] the history of miracles, [...] arranged in such a way as to never be forgotten, or lost, or simply mistaken for everyday things with no particular significance."

\- Simon Van Booy, from _The City of Windy Trees_

 

i.

Q is sixteen when their aunt dies.

Jim is twenty, and he shouldn’t display such marked lack of concern about coming to the funeral. It’s in broad daylight. It was announced in the paper. He couldn’t be more of a target right now.

He must have a sniper hidden somewhere; he’s always wanted one.

Q doesn’t ask if it was this particular sniper who shot their aunt and set him loose for Jim to collect. He’s horribly grateful, the way dogs are grateful for their masters, and he recognises it in himself clear as anything, but it doesn’t change how he feels.

He’s never felt like an orphan. He’s always had Jim.

 

ii.

Moneypenny catches the change in Q’s file (one brother; deceased) the day after Jim puts a gun to his head and pulls the trigger. She’s not out of breath when she appears at Q’s shoulder in a cloud of subtle perfume and unsubtle concern, but she’s a trained field agent; she wouldn’t be winded by a brisk walk through the MI6 building. He knows she came straight down anyway.

“You could’ve taken the day off,” she says carefully, after a pause where he tilts his head in acknowledgment. “For god’s sake, Q, we can hold down the fort for that long.”

“I didn’t need a day off,” Q says, just as careful.

Moran’s mobile pinged on Q’s street at seven in the morning, so Q figured it was safe enough for him to go to work. When empires like Jim’s come crashing down, loose ends like younger brothers tend to be tied up in a hurry. Sebastian is too loyal, still, to let that happen.

Moneypenny’s hand lands gently on Q’s arm. He was quiet for too long, but maybe she’ll read it as grief. “If you need to talk to anyone -”

For a moment Q is worried she’ll volunteer to listen, but she just passes him a card with the name of a therapist printed neatly on the front and a private number penned across the back in her chicken scrawl.

“Thank you,” he tells her, because that’s what one does.

He wonders if she’d have more or less sympathy if she knew his brother’s name. If she’d be less worried or more, knowing that Sebastian Moran volunteered to keep Q safe.

She leaves, and Q puts the card in his pocket. He won’t make the call.

 

iii.

It’s such a small thing, but so telling, the knife under Jim’s pillow. They share a room, so of course Q knows about it. The first lesson he learned from people who aren’t Jim was that he needs to know where the weapons are.

Jim finds him carving their initials on one of the back legs of his nightstand. It takes Q a minute to remember what the scent of almond means - cyanide, just an experiment, then - and he meets Jim’s eyes with raised eyebrows of his own.

“I wasn’t going to use it on you,” Jim tells him mildly, holding his hand out. Q, eleven and too smart by half, gives his brother back the knife.

He wonders if this is what people mean when they say that love hurts, because he’s only ever felt safe in their bedroom. Jim is the most dangerous person Q knows, and he wants Q alive, so what’s there to be scared of?

Their aunt hates them for it: one too twisted to be cowed, the other too fiercely owned to ever listen to her.

Q is numb to terror. She tries pain, but he screams and puts it behind him when it’s over. They’ll grow up and leave soon; she doesn’t matter. Q doesn’t bother to hide how little he cares for her - Jim fakes it well enough for the both of them when he wants to. He promised Q that he’ll deal with her if it comes to that. Q hopes it won’t, but it gets him through, inconsequential bruises and all.

He learns how to throw Jim’s knife when he’s too marked up to leave the house.

 

iv.

When Jim’s seventeen, Q sees him holding a gun to his own temple, staring off into the distance with a look on his face like he’s having a revelation. Q backs away slowly and closes the door behind him.

He’s not worried; relieved, maybe, that there’s an end to Jim’s trail of destruction and it won’t have to be Q himself. He’s not too blind to see that he’s Jim’s only exception, that Jim is a psychopath.

He grieves for his brother before Jim’s done too much harm. He’ll miss him, but he knows the world won’t.

*

He takes the job at MI6 hoping that working in the shadows will feel like home, and it does. Sometimes he follows Jim’s exploits after hours, and when he’s too tired to pretend, he admits to himself that part of the reason he decided to work in espionage was that he’d be able to track Jim more easily than a mere hacker could.

Jim buys him a mug with a Q Scrabble piece on it the day he becomes Quartermaster.

 

v.

When he finds out about it, Q thinks, _here is the deepest secret nobody knows, and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart:_ even Jim had a heart. No one misses him the way Q does - like the colour’s gone out of the walls, like the end of a fireworks display.

As if he went extinct instead of dying.


End file.
